Current Trends in Cultural Customization and the Ecommerce Experience

The Internet is continually evolving and new access mediums have expanded its reach, connecting people all over the world. This has allowed businesses unparalleled access to consumers, propelling ecommerce to becoming a greater source of revenue for businesses of all sizes. Previous web design standards endorsed localization as a key requirement for a company's Internet success. However, with the rise of a new Internet culture, localization does not appear to be prevalent nor does it seem to be a requirement for success. This thesis explores concept of user experience as it relates cultural customization, current trends in localization, and more current principles to be considered with localization

Feasibility of Digitizing LEI Evaluations with an Internationalized ASSISTments

The Latino Education Institute (LEI), a Worcester-based nonprofit dedicated to improving the social and academic wellbeing of Latino youth and families, sought to streamline its student evaluations by moving from pen-and-paper to an online platform. ASSISTments, an online educational platform run by WPI, looked to expand its global presence beyond the United States. This MQP addressed both issues at once by internationalizing ASSISTments and determining whether it was the optimal service for digitizing LEI’s evaluations. I achieved my goal by identifying software requirements, modifying source code, analyzing competitors, and conducting student pilot programs. In the end, I provided ASSISTments with translation capabilities and helped LEI transition to an appropriate means of digitization

Assessing The Global E-Readiness Of Hotel Chain Websites

Companies serving a truly global customer base need to adapt their websites to take the linguistic, culture and social differences of local markets into account. This study benchmarks the efforts of hotel chains to incorporate appropriately adapted content and facilities on their consumer websites as an indicator of their commitment to servicing international markets. Both individual findings and the summary Global e-Readiness Index suggest that most are not acting global in their e-commerce efforts. While many provide content in languages other than English, even the highest performers fail to take their internationalization efforts deep enough into the purchase process to facilitate purchases by international clients

Pysafe: An interdisciplinary approach to interface design

The purpose of this project is two fold : examine the prevailing wisdom of the interaction design field over the past forty years and look at emerging perspectives, then apply the established principles along with new trends in a practical application. Includes source code

Measuring user rated language quality: Development and validation of the user interface Language Quality Survey (LQS)

Written text plays a special role in user interfaces. Key information in interaction elements and content are mostly conveyed through text. The global context, where software has to run in multiple geographical and cultural regions, requires software developers to translate their interfaces into many different languages. This translation process is prone to errors – therefore the question of how language quality can be measured is important. This paper presents the development of a questionnaire to measure user interface language quality (LQS). After a first validation of the instrument with 843 participants, a final set of 10 items remained, which was tested again (). The survey showed a high internal consistency (Cronbach׳s α) of .82, acceptable discriminatory power coefficients (.34–.47), as well as a moderate average homogeneity of .36. The LQS also showed moderate correlation to UMUX, an established usability metric (convergent validity), and it successfully distinguished high and low language quality (discriminative validity). The application to three different products (YouTube, Google Analytics, Google AdWords) revealed similar key statistics, providing evidence that this survey is product-independent. Meanwhile, the survey has been translated and applied to more than 60 languages

IoT aplicado a sistemas de riego en agricultura: Un análisis de usabilidad

The Internet of Things favors using technological tools in rural environments thanks to the ability to connect to the Internet between devices that facilitate daily tasks. The research aims to evaluate the usability of the decision support system for irrigation in agriculture, AgroRIEGO, through the development of an IoT-based device. The sponsors of this project were the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies and the Center of Excellence in the Internet of Things Appropriation (CEA-IoT) in Colombia. Among the methods used is the use of the heuristic evaluation technique, structured into 15 categories and 62 subcategories of assessment. This analysis was complemented by the contribution of a group of experts in the design and development of IoT applications and devices and agriculture to assess the system's attributes.El Internet de las Cosas favorece el aprovechamiento de las herramientas tecnológicas en ambientes rurales, gracias a la capacidad de conexión a Internet entre dispositivos que facilita el quehacer diario. El objetivo de la investigación es evaluar la usabilidad del sistema de soporte para la toma de decisiones de riego en el agro, AgroRIEGO, que se tiene desde el desarrollo de una aplicación de un dispositivo basado en IoT. El patrocinador de este proyecto fue el Ministerio de Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación y el Centro de Excelencia de Apropiación en Internet de las Cosas (CEA-IoT) en Colombia. Dentro de los métodos usados se encuentra el uso de la técnica de evaluación heurística, estructurada en 15 categorías y 62 subcategorías de valoración. Este análisis se complementa con el aporte de un grupo de expertos en el diseño y desarrollo de aplicaciones y dispositivos IoT y el agro para valorar los atributos del sistema

Comparison Of Apple\u27s Ios 5 And Android For Mobile Applications Development: A Developer\u27s Perspective

Body composition, or the proportion of fat, muscle, and bone of an individual\u27s body, is an important indication of health status. Numerous techniques can be used to assess body composition, producing varied results and measurements. For individuals with insufficient or excessive amounts of body fat, accurate assessment of body composition is crucial. Two commonly used techniques for measuring body composition are air displacement plethysmography (adp) and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (dxa). Past research has been conducted, comparing adp and dxa, but the results are inconsistent. The majority of past studies found that, when compared to dxa, adp underestimated body fat percentage, but a few studies found that adp overestimated body fat percentage. Additionally, majority of the past studies have focused on ideal weight, overweight, and obese adults, with little research on body composition of athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine whether body fat percentages obtained by adp and dxa statistically differ from one another, specifically in a lean population. Ninety-three collegiate student athletes participating in Division I NCAA sports participated in the study. Subjects underwent a bod pod and dxa scan, measuring their body composition. Body fat measures were then analyzed using spss. Paired-sample t-tests were conducted, comparing body fat percentage estimates from adp and dxa. Box plots and bland-altman plots were also created to display data. Results shothat body fat percentages obtained by adp were significantly lower than body fat percentages obtained by dxa, with the difference being greater in leaner individuals. These results are consistent with the majority of past research, which states that adp underestimates body fat percentage when compared to dxa. Clinicians should consider this discrepancy between adp and dxa for deciding which equipment to use when making clinical decions regarding student athletes\u27 health or participation status

Automated and Context-Aware Repair of Color-Related Accessibility Issues for Android Apps

Approximately 15% of the world's population is suffering from various disabilities or impairments. However, many mobile UX designers and developers disregard the significance of accessibility for those with disabilities when developing apps. A large number of studies and some effective tools for detecting accessibility issues have been conducted and proposed to mitigate such a severe problem. However, compared with detection, the repair work is obviously falling behind. Especially for the color-related accessibility issues, which is one of the top issues in apps with a greatly negative impact on vision and user experience. Apps with such issues are difficult to use for people with low vision and the elderly. Unfortunately, such an issue type cannot be directly fixed by existing repair techniques. To this end, we propose Iris, an automated and context-aware repair method to fix the color-related accessibility issues (i.e., the text contrast issues and the image contrast issues) for apps. By leveraging a novel context-aware technique that resolves the optimal colors and a vital phase of attribute-to-repair localization, Iris not only repairs the color contrast issues but also guarantees the consistency of the design style between the original UI page and repaired UI page. Our experiments unveiled that Iris can achieve a 91.38% repair success rate with high effectiveness and efficiency. The usefulness of Iris has also been evaluated by a user study with a high satisfaction rate as well as developers' positive feedback. 9 of 40 submitted pull requests on GitHub repositories have been accepted and merged into the projects by app developers, and another 4 developers are actively discussing with us for further repair. Iris is publicly available to facilitate this new research direction.Comment: 11 pages plus 2 additional pages for reference

Cross-cultural differences in automotive HMI design : a comparative study between UK and Indian users’ design preferences

This paper presents a research study examining the importance of understanding automotive users’ cultural values and their individual preferences for human machine interface (HMI) design features and functionalities. The goal of this research was to explore how a cultural model can be applied in the development of automotive HMI solutions and future design localization. To meet this goal, it was necessary to (a) identify the characteristics of the Hofstede cultural model, (b) identify the differences in cultural values using the model, and (c) identify regional differences in HMI design needs and preferences across drivers from India and the UK. The results highlighted differences in expectations for HMI systems between the groups, suggesting an influence of culture on the perception of vehicle user interface technology. This led to the conclusion that an understanding of cultural biases can influence design localization and support development strategies. In addition, two main categories of further research have arisen as a result of this project. The first category focuses on identifying methodologies to establish relationships between culture and regional drivers’ HMI design preferences. The second category comprises new research questions on tools and processes to deal with cultural influences